Mage Solo Post XP Nerf Tips..

[Travint]

I've tried this out on my druid and mage and it would appear as though the damage from a DS counts toward no ones damage.

So if a mob has 500 HP, and through the course of the fight, the DS does 100 damage, then I only have to do 201 damage to the pet's 199 to not suffer the penalty?

[formallydickman]

Originally Posted by Travint [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So if a mob has 500 HP, and through the course of the fight, the DS does 100 damage, then I only have to do 201 damage to the pet's 199 to not suffer the penalty?

That is correct as far as I can tell.

[fischsemmel]

Originally Posted by mwatt [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is not particularly mana efficient, but it is the best I could come up with.

Nothing is mana efficient for mages, except for letting your pet do most of the work and then earning xp as fast as a solo rogue.

[bman8810]

This works very well, granted it isn't as good as 1 damage was but whatever. As a note, if the mob has 2 hp left and you do 1 damage to it and then your pet hits for 2 damage you will NOT get experience (at least from what I have seen). As such, make sure to do more than the max damage your pet can dish out in one nuke/hit.

[Naerron]

did u not read my guide almost identical to the title of this thread? It's a solid method from low lvl till 60. Most skilled mages i know did this even before the nerf. I know i did it when i was lvling to 50 pre kunark and was like the 5th mage on server to hit 50 with fairly low play time because i was in school and had a job then.

[Excellio]

I think this is ridiculous. Mages really rely on their pets to solo. That's like giving a Warrior an xp penalty for using a weapon. I guess it's probably true to the original game, but it seems like something that should've been fixed. Otherwise, the mage isn't really a viable solo class at all, I guess.

[bman8810]

Pet chaining is by far the most efficient way to level. Mages still solo fine, especially at higher levels (this really only hurts the lowbies and charmers).

[Calais]

A good technique for lowbies is to ensure you have a strong pet and a decent amount of mana and then attack a mob, get it to 5-10% health, and let it run off. Rinse repeat another few times, ensuring they all stay under 20% or they'll run back at you. Then when you have 3-4 low health mobs wandering around, you reclaim elements on your pet, and with a few quick nukes you have your kills, without having to recast a pet every time.

Just gets you more bang for your buck for pet mana, and means you're taking down four blues or whites for full xp in between each med (~5 mins).

[BarackObooma]

My mage is my alt but I've played him quite a bit lately and got him to 52 using the below strategy.

#1 get jboots. Before anything else. This will save you countless deaths. Camp them, buy the MQ, whatever, do it before anything else.

The Dreadlands outside Karnors can take you from about 29 to 52 pretty fast even with no dungeon bonus. I went from 47 Saturday morning to 51 Sunday night (and yes I slept). I recommend levitating on top of KC and binding there. If you need to go afk or med, you won't come back to a dead char.

Use your fire pet. You save mana from having to DS. Do not buff him, don't summon or give swords, it's a waste of time/money/mana. Make sure you've done the torch quest.

Mem your highest nuke, a mid level nuke and your level 1 nuke.

Pull with your level 1 nuke. Send your pet after the mob, since it's a level 1 nuke it won't take much for your pet to get aggro. If the mob still comes after you, run around in a circle just out of mob's melee range. Once your pet hits hit once or twice, he'll get on him.

Let your pet do all the damage. Sit and med. Know your mob though. If you know your pet can get the mob down to where he'll start to walk away when they get low, you can sit closer. If you know he can't, sit much farther away.

For mobs that one pet won't finish off like Ravishing Drolvargs (they have twice as many hitpoints as the rest of the mobs in the zone), I'll have my pet on one end of the north or east wall and I'll run to the other end of the wall. This will give you plenty of time to recast a pet when/if he dies. Since you haven't done more than your original 5 pt level 1 DD, your 2nd pet will be able to grab the mob really quickly.

For spiders, I'll pull and once the pet is on him, I'll cast nullify magic to strip their sow & damage shield (many are druid). When you pull them they usually try dotting you with stinging swarm and the fire based dot. Since you'll be sitting most of the time, it's usually not a big deal. You can avoid spiders if you want, most people do. If you hunt in burning woods, many of the sarnaks have sow so it's good to keep a nullify/cancel magic spell up in case something goes wrong you can outrun them.

When the mob starts walking away, you can time it and reclaim your pet (preferably using your torch) when he gets as close to 0% without dying. You'll get good once you know the mobs. You can work on your 1h or 2h blunt also if you want. If it's like 2% or less, I'll usually melee it down. If it's under 10% I'll use my medium nuke. If it's about 15% I'll go ahead and use my big nuke.

Repeat as much as you want because you'll be full mana pretty much the whole time so there is never any downtime. This was the biggest shock for me since my main is a Wizard who quads a round and sits afk for 10 minutes and repeats.

I also powerlevel friends this way. Get the mob to where it walks, kill the pet and whoever does the most damage after that gets the experience. Good experience for level 20+ melee with little to no danger of dying.

If you have a burnt wood staff (mana free 333 dmg nuke), you can kill your pet as soon as the mob flees and use that once to take out the mob.

There is an old wayback machine site that's been linked before Graff? that showed how many hitpoints each mob has.

[alcoma23]

Forgive me for sounding ignorant here, but I don't understand the penalty. If I let my pet do most of the damage to a mob (which is what I have been doing) I lose out on exp that "goes to my pet?"

Never played a pet class on live, so I'm not sure what the nerf does.